Guardians Inc.:Thundersword (Guardians Incorporated #2) (39 page)

“Okay,” Ratatosk jumped down and left Thomas’s field of vision. “I'll see you in an hour, and I'll check what's around.”

“And I'll put the unit to sleep,” Bolswaithe said. “Conserve energy. Good luck, Thomas.”

Thomas couldn't even move his eyes, and he realized that this could probably become the worst hour of his life.

And all for a glimpse.

It took him less than five minutes to realize that it had been a terrible idea.

Thomas thought that if he was ever going to hell, this was what it would be like. He was fully conscious and frozen in place. He couldn't move, he couldn't blink, he couldn't sleep or even imagine things because his eyes were open and staring, fixed on his grandpa’s eyes.

Even trying to adjust the depth of what he was seeing, forcing his eyes to focus on something else than grandpa’s irises, was impossible. He wanted to scream, to yell at Bolswaithe or Ratatosk to close his eyes. At least that way, in darkness, he would be able to focus his mind on something else.

The minutes crawled. He tried to think how much time had passed, but he couldn't. He began to count the seconds and the minutes…he talked to himself. He conjured up songs and tunes in his head, plots of books he'd read.

It was mind boggling, easily by far the most horrible sensation he'd ever felt.

Had he been able he would have quit after the first three minutes, but he couldn't. He was in for the duration. For a terrible minute he imagined himself trapped forever, and his brain panicked, but his body remained motionless. He promised he would never, ever do something like this again. What had compelled him to do it in the first place? Had he known what it would be like…

Hindsight is always 20/20, Thomas
, his father used to tell him.

He grasped at Dad’s memory. He needed to or he was sure he would go mad. What else did his father like to say?

Do as I say, not as I do.
God! How he had hated that stupid saying. What gave his dad the right to say something like that?

The Devil is wise because he's old, not because he's the devil.
Where the hell did that one come from? Oh yes, from Gramps... another of his grandma's Spanish sayings that translated poorly to English.

It's because he has experience
, Dad had explained it once for him.
The Devil is old and experienced. That's what makes him wise, not his nature as the devil.
Thomas had been eleven maybe, and although he nodded, he didn't really know what Dad or Gramps were talking about. Until now.

Experience.

This was an experience that would embed in his memory and make him wise about trying to do things on the spur of the moment. He stared at the little patch in his grandpa's irises.

All this for a stupid glimpse.

A glimpse that might or might not register in his grandfather’s mind.

Just look before you jump, Tom.
This had been one of Mom’s sayings. She had told him the same thing many times when he was little and played with the sofa cushions. He would make houses and then, imagining he was a great monster or superhero, attack the sofa fort by jumping over it.  It was one of his favorite games until he didn’t look before jumping.

Three stitches later the saying had stuck in his mind forever.

Until now.

I jumped before looking, Mom, 
he thought and the memory of his mother taking care of him after that fall calmed him for a little bit. She was always so thoughtful, so caring, and he would have given anything for her to reprimand him about doing this.

As much as he wished to keep imagining or recalling memories, it was impossible with his eyes open—the sight of his grandfather in front of him overpowered whatever his brain could conjure up.

He thought he was going to go crazy and he would have hit himself senseless against a wall had he been able to move.

“Time,” Bolswaithe voice chimed in. “One hour, exactly.”

At last! An hour had gone by since Ratatosk injected him with the venom.

He tried to move, but he couldn’t…not an inch, not even a millimeter.

“It seems that the effect will last a little longer,” Bolswaithe said.

You think?
Thomas wanted to yell.

“I’ll put myself in sleep mode,” Bolswaithe said.

No!

“Please let me know when you’ve regained mobility.”

Don’t leave dammit! Talk to me!

“Good luck.”

BOLSWAITHE! DON’T LEAVE ME HERE!

Thomas was going to kill Bolswaithe…well, not kill him, just chew him up for leaving him there. Bolswaithe knew how the centipede venom worked. Why wasn’t he staying to accompany him? Just talking, trying to explain one of those theoretical physics equations he loved? A history lesson? Anything?

Stupid
…rooo…botttt! Not a proper word, more like a wheezing sound.

He could make a sound! He tried again. Just push some air out.

“Thomas?” Bolswaithe activated. “You there?”

His teeth rattled.

“The venom is losing its effect. Any moment now you’ll be able to move.”

Thomas tried to move his eyes, and he almost missed it.

The glimpse.

Grandpa’s eyes refocused on him. He was sure of the change.

Now, as he began to regain mobility he strained to keep static just a little longer.

Grandpa’s irises moved, just a tiny bit, along with the rest of the background.

“Thomas?” 

Suddenly, Thomas’s body was released from the effects of the venom and he drew in a long breath. “I’m back!” he said, doubling over. He checked Grandpa, whose irises had definitely moved.

“Was it worth it?” Bolswaithe asked.

“It was horrible,” Thomas said flatly. All the anger and anxiety he had accumulated during that hour had been replaced with excitement now that Gramps would definitely know he had been here, and he had seen that the images were real-time memories. Maybe they could work together to find his parents.

Maybe some things could go back to normal.

Fire Team 12

“Now to leave a note.” Thomas approached Joran and took the elf’s sword from the scabbard at his side. It was a thin and light blade, slightly curved at the tip and looked very sharp.

“You still want to do that?” Bolswaithe asked. “Morgan will surely know you were here, but should you alert the others?”

“I have an idea about that,” Thomas said, approaching the wall where the Oracle’s sign had been. “How long does it take you to focus your camera in this time frame?” he asked.

“Approximately forty-nine minutes after being completely still. Why?”

“I want to make a test.” Thomas began to draw symbols in the ice using the sword tip. “I’m leaving something that only he can decipher.”

“Can you do that? Using your powers in reverse?”

“The ancient Cyphers did it.” Thomas kept drawing symbols in the ice wall, lines and circles as he thought of the meaning he wanted to instill in them. “The Guardians’ symbol and shield are full of things the older Cyphers wrote that can only be read by me. I don’t see why I can’t do the same.”

“It’s worth finding out in any case,” Bolswaithe said. “Just leave me somewhere where the camera can see it.”

“And, there…” Thomas finished his writing and stepped back. Although he had moved his hands in strange patterns, drawing more than writing, his brain decoded the message he’d left and he read it in perfect English.

He walked past Grandpa and set the wristpadd on the floor with the camera facing the message he had drawn.

“What does it say?” Bolswaithe asked and Thomas definitely decided that this smaller version wasn’t nearly as bright as the full-bodied one.

“That’s what we are trying to find out,” he said. “You tell me when you can see the image. I'll find Ratatosk.”

Thomas walked away; he tried to follow the trail Ratatosk had left on the snow. The squirrel had been very active—the lines ran to the sides of buildings and up the street, and he had even ventured out into the frozen lake and back.

“Ratatosk!” he yelled, tired of trying his tracking skills.

“Over here!” he heard the squirrel yelling from the edge of a wall. He was on top of a two-story house by the waterfront.

Thomas approached the house as Ratatosk slid down using a water drain. “What where you doing out here?” Thomas asked.

“Just checking around,” Ratatosk said nervously. “But I think I found out why the Norns sent you back at precisely this moment.”

“What do you mean?”

“You did ask me that before, remember?”

Thomas nodded and Ratatosk climbed onto his shoulder. “Check it out,” he said, pointing to the side of the house. As Thomas approached the edge of the wall he saw red stains in the snow.

Blood.

Lots of it.

A sizable pool of blood had formed in the snow. Thomas followed the rivulet as it snaked back from the side of the building. He slowly turned the corner and found a massacre.

Three members of a Guardians’ Fire Team were piled against the wall. Their uniforms stained with blood and their body armor in shambles, they had been killed by what seemed to be bullets from a high-powered weapon. The blood had flowed freely from their wounds. The first one, a chimpanzee faun had been shot through the back of the head. The woman by his side displayed three wounds on her chest, and a man beside her another three or four.

Thomas didn't check them for vitals. Even if they were still alive, which he doubted, the wounds would kill them as time resumed.

“What the hell happened here?” Thomas tightened his grip on Joran's sword.

“It's not only this,” Ratatosk said. “You see over there?” he pointed at the base of a tree trunk. “I think that's what happened.”

Thomas strained his eyes, but he couldn't see anything. “What is it?”

“Get closer,” Ratatosk said. “It's behind the tree trunk, at the base.”

As Thomas approached the tree trunk a form appeared delineated against the background.  The long barrel of a rifle, with a thick silencer and a reactive camouflage, made it practically invisible from more than ten feet away. A small cloud of gas was hanging from the end of the muzzle, and a high-caliber bullet hovered a couple of inches away from it.

He followed the barrel toward the shooter; he was covered in the same camouflage, even his face was covered by a mask and wore red glasses over his eyes.

The rifle had just been fired. Thomas knelt and looked down the rifle's barrel. Even though it looked to be aimed a little over his grandfather’s head, he guessed the shooter had compensated for distance.

“One of yours?” Ratatosk asked and Thomas heart sank.

Tony!
he thought.
This was the assignment! The reason why Bolswaithe had eluded answering my questions about Tony all this time.

The Guardians had ordered his grandfather's assassination! Thomas fell back into the snow.

“What's going on?” Ratatosk asked, but Thomas was in shock, thinking about the implications of finding Tony trying to kill Grandpa.

“Aren't you going find out who this is?” Ratatosk jumped in front of his face.

“I don't want to know,” Thomas said.

“What?”

“It might be a friend.”

“Even more important to know if he is your friend or not.” Ratatosk jumped toward the shooter and pulled back the hood of his camouflage jacket, leaving only the mask and glasses for Thomas to remove. “What if he isn't your friend?”

“What if he is?” Thomas asked.

“Then you know what to expect from your friends,” Ratatosk said.

Thomas sighed; Ratatosk was right. He approached the hooded man, and pulled the mask, making the glasses fly away from his face.

It wasn't Tony, but Thomas felt relief mixed with fear, and the ominous feeling that the assassin had been sent by Guardians Inc. hadn't been lifted.

The face had no skin, the eyes were lidless, and instead of a nose a pair of gaping holes rose from the center of the face. It was a human skull, but made of dull metal.

A robot.

And he knew of only one company that made robots as sophisticated as this one.

“So is this your friend?” Ratatosk asked, jumping from his shoulder to take a closer look at the robot's head.

“No, it's not,” Thomas said. “It's a robot.”

“A metal golem,” Ratatosk corrected. “Like your friend from the flying thing.”

“Only one way to find out.” Thomas took the rifle from the robot’s hands, and using it as a bat he hit the bullet toward the lake. He then turned the robot around and undressed its torso.

The robot actually seemed less advanced than Bolswaithe. A hard, plastic frame was formed as a ribcage and it held gears inside. While he knew that Bolswaithe was a modular design and could easily exchange damaged limbs with just a quick connection, this robot seemed to be made as a unit, and there were no obvious disconnection points along the arms.

He struck repeatedly at the ribcage until it cracked and he pulled on the pieces. The inside was a jumble of cables, gears, chains, and a box, which he guessed was the central processor embedded into the spine.

He broke that first.

Then he struck at the elbow joints until one became loose. No great splash of fluids came from it, and it was mostly interlocked hard metal gears and a couple of hydraulics on the arm.

It sure wasn't as advanced as Bolswaithe, the more he looked at it the more it seemed to be a jumble of hastily assembled parts, but it was advanced enough to have killed three members of a Guardians’ Fire Teams.

“Four,” he said aloud, scanning the surrounding area.

“Pardon?” Ratatosk was pulling on the ribcage and making himself a necklace with the colored cables.

“Fire Teams have four members,” Thomas said. “Where is the fourth?”

Ratatosk sniffed the air while standing on his hind legs. “Back there,” he said, taking off toward another building. Thomas ran behind him.

They found the fourth member of the Fire Team on the ground. It was a young woman holding a high-powered rifle, exactly like the one the robot had. Her eyes were closed and she seemed unconscious. Thomas knelt to check her pulse and remembered that even if she were alive he wouldn't be able to feel anything because of the time variance.